


Take These Wings

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Nausea, Phobic Attack, Post S3, Violence, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 05:10:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7346383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Daisy’s encounter with some Inhumanophobes leaves her incapacitated, she finally makes contact with her family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take These Wings

**Author's Note:**

> Contains descriptions of nausea/migraine sensations.

She’d forgotten what it felt like, being hungry - really hungry - but apart from that, it wasn’t so bad. She skipped from city to city and back again, retracing her steps, since people didn’t tend to look again, where they’d checked already. A combination of picking pockets and odd jobs were enough to keep her afloat, and if she really needed it, she had a few strangers in her favour ever since she’d started dropping favours their way. She didn’t have an address, but she had herself and her new name (Quake, they were calling her these days. She smiled whenever she saw it) and that was all she’d ever needed.

But not all she wanted.

Fitz and Simmons were in New York now. They had an apartment. Living the domestic life while Daisy was right under their noses. She had their number, but she hadn’t called it yet. They’d keep her secret if she asked them, Daisy was sure, but she didn’t want to even suggest to them the dilemma of calling Coulson. God, Coulson. Daisy could only imagine how stressed out he would be. She’d tried to let him know she was safe, but that wasn’t enough for him. He was desperate to find her, to help her somehow, as if reassuring her that she had a family would quell the pain.

Maybe it would, though. Maybe that’s why she took her phone out, every day, and stared at it for a good five minutes, wondering if this was the day she finally caved and pressed the little green button. Maybe that’s why she almost talked to it, on bad days, imagining what she’d tell them about her life.

Maybe that’s why, when a tiny bird fell out of the tree she was sitting under, and bruised its tiny wings on the wood of the bench she was sitting on, it felt like a sign.

“Hey there,” Daisy murmured. “Hey, little guy. Are you okay?”

She looked around for the bird’s potential parents. She remembered reading somewhere that you weren’t supposed to touch them. Still, she couldn’t just leave the baby bird like that, yelping. At least it was upright, and its wings seemed to be folding like they were supposed to.

“Nothing broken?” Daisy murmured. “Just a little shaken up. That’s good, that’s okay. Want some help?”

She looked around and, seeing no-one, concentrated on crafting a light, delicate imitation of a breeze from her hands. She maneuvered it around the bird, until it hopped into the draft and struggled its way into the air. Grinning Daisy rose, and lifted it, watching it get the hang of flapping in time to hold its bodyweight up. As she watched it leave her support, off into the real air, disappearing into the tree canopy, the joy in her heart was all of a sudden replaced by fear with the crunching of boots in the gravel.

“Hey,” a gruff voice demanded. “Are you one ‘a them?”

Daisy shrugged, stuffing her hands in her pockets, hoping the badass-hiding-her-softer-side would cover up whatever they thought they had seen.

“You wasn’t touching that bird, man,” the gravel-boot guy’s friend insisted. “You one ‘a them powered people or some shit.”  
  
“We don’t like them powered people, round here,” gravel-boot warned, sneering.

Daisy sneered back. There was still no one else around.

“Yeah, I’ve got powers,” she retorted, raising a challenging eyebrow as she took her hands out of her pockets. “Wanna see?”

The ground started to tremble, but before she could do anything remotely spectacular enough to stun them into silence – or brand them unbelievable – a splitting, screeching, buzzing sound filled her ears. It was so loud, it was somehow blinding, and it threw her off balance. She hit the ground, and panicked. Was she bleeding? Was that blood in her ears? Was she quaking? Was she going to hurt someone?

She felt sick. Suddenly, violently sick, like every cell in her body was suddenly no longer connected. Like she was becoming a liquid. The world around her screamed, and vibrations that had once been harmonious and made her feel like she was a part of something, felt like they were tearing her apart.

The boys kicked her. Stepped on her hands and feet. Spat at her, cursed at her. She curled up. She could feel her heart racing – she could barely breathe – and she knew, she __knew__ without a doubt now, that she could bring this whole city to its knees if she let her pain bleed outward.

After a while she realised the pain had stopped. She still felt like a liquid – like she and everything around her was in a state of flux. She hauled herself onto her wrists…onto one wrist, she corrected, wincing…and vomited.

“Oh, shit,” she muttered, looking around. No one. Not even her attackers.

“May’s gonna kill me.” She gagged again, and struggled into a sitting position. She scrabbled back to the bench, but didn’t dare lift herself for fear of disturbing her stomach too much. She leant against it, and breathed. The world around her was a blur, her ears still ringing.

“What was that?” An EMP for Inhumans?

( _I’m gonna throw up, I’m gonna throw up._ The undercurrent to her thoughts).

“I need help.”

She talked over the urge to vomit, hoping she could drown it out. Hardly daring to check the state of her sore wrist, she dug into her pocket with her good hand and pulled out her phone. The screen was seriously cracked, but the light still glowed behind it, and for a moment, Daisy smiled.

And then.

A wave of nausea overcame her, and she dropped her head to the ground.

“Breathe,” she whispered to herself. “Breathe.”

She tried to pay attention to the smell and the feel of the air, soothing her stomach. She closed her eyes. Maybe if the swirling colours stopped, so would the ringing and the headache and the feeling that she was disintegrating. Blindly, she tapped at her phone until it started ringing.

_“Go for Fitz.”_

Daisy smiled.

“Fitz,” she breathed, surprised at the rasping of her own voice.

_“Daisy?”_

“Thank God it’s you. I need you to find me. Something happened. They – they did something to me.”

_“Where are you?”_

“New York. The park. A park. On Third I think? Track the phone, I – something’s really wrong.”

_“I’m on my way. You stay on the phone, okay? Stay on the phone. What happened? Did you take anything? Did somebody drug you?”_

“No,” Daisy groaned. “But I’m pretty sure this is what being roofied feels like. Hold on.”

She covered the phone as best she could, and turned her head away from it, into the garden bed, to vomit again.

“Ugh. It’s in my hair.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to shake the sparkling stars, like rainbow glitter, that tried to take over her vision. Darkness didn’t scatter them.

“Fitz?”

_“Yeah?”_

“Can you bring water?”

-

“Water. Water. Daisy. Look at me.”

She woke up to Fitz, giving up on pressing water to her lips. When she opened her eyes, she saw him visibly relax.

“Thank God,” he breathed. “You scared me.”

“I’m still gonna throw up.”

“Got you covered.”

He offered her a green bucket, and all of a sudden it occurred to her to check her surroundings. She’d seen Fitz and thought __safety__ , but she wasn’t in the park any more. She was on somebody’s couch. In a house. With yellow walls and red carpet and a vase of flowers on the TV cabinet.

“You’d seriously better use the bucket,” Fitz warned. “If you get sick on the carpet, chances are one of us is gonna be pissed.”

“Probably Jemma,” Daisy guessed.

“Probably. Especially since I’m a sympathetic vomiter, and if you start, I’ll start.”

“I’ll try not to start, then.”

“It’s okay. Got that covered too.”

Fitz held up a blue bucket. Daisy smiled dopily.

“You’re an idiot.”

“You’re hung over.”

Daisy shook her head. It was so much worse than a hangover, she couldn’t describe it. It had felt like she was going to die, even though she knew she wasn’t. Even now, it still felt like her body hadn’t entirely committed to being a single entity yet.

Seeing Daisy’s expression sober, Fitz frowned.

“What happened?” he asked.

“These guys attacked me. They had this…sonic thing. Made this noise like…like a plane crashing. It was so loud, like it was inside me. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. They threw me around and ran off and I called you.”

“Who were they?”

Daisy shrugged, and immediately grimaced, but the growling unsettled monster in her stomach saw fit to leave her be.

“I don’t know,” she explained. “Just some randoms. At least, I thought so. But where’d they get this tech from then, and how did they know it would work on me?”

Fitz shrugged.

“Something that loud would probably work on anyone. They didn’t necessarily know about your powers. In advance, anyway. I think what you experienced was just good old-fashioned prejudice.”

“Excellent.” Daisy groaned as she adjusted her seat, sliding down into an even more horizontal position. “I, a biracial female orphan, really needed more of that in my life.”

Fitz pursed his lips ruefully, and sighed.

“Drink some water,” he insisted. “Sleep it off. We’ll find these guys when you’re better.”

“Mmm.” Daisy nodded. She sipped the water Fitz held out, and then left it on the floor beside her so that she could reach it later. Fitz nodded, satisfied, and stood.

“Fitz?” Daisy asked, once he had wandered out of her sight, behind the couch.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t tell Coulson I’m here, okay?”

Fitz frowned, but nodded again.

“Sure. Can I tell Jemma?

Daisy smiled.

“Yeah. Of course. You haven’t called her already?”

“I wasn’t sure how long you were going to be out. I didn’t want her to find you asleep. Thought it might bring back some bad memories.”

“Good idea. But tell her now. I’m okay. It’ll be nice to see her.”

 _Of course,_ Daisy thought to herself, as she heard the phone ringing behind her, and Jemma’s muted, tinny voice through the tiny speakers. Fitz snorted.

“What?” Daisy wondered.

“She wants to know what you want for dinner.”


End file.
